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Auto-Posting to Facebook Decreases Likes and Comments by 70%

by Justin Says
16 replies
I loved this case study that shows how auto-posting is decreasing interactions.

In my experience with well over 200,000 fans on all of my pages, I've seen the same results. Barely anyone responds to an autoposted (if using a software outside of Facebook) post.

But... if you use the integrated Facebook scheduling feature and have it post things that never grow old, they do wonderful.

Screenshot:



Here's the case study regarding Facebook likes and comments decreasing..

Screenshot:


The study determined that compared to the engagement of posts published manually to Facebook's web or mobile interfaces, the reduction in engagement ratios of the top third-party publishing APIs are:
  • HootSuite - 69% reduction
  • TweetDeck - 73% reduction
  • Sendible - 75% reduction
  • Networked Blogs - 76% reduction
  • RSS Graffiti - 81% reduction
  • Twitter - 83% reduction
  • Publisher - 86% reduction
  • twitterfeed - 90% reduction
  • dlvr.it - 91% reduction
  • Social RSS - 94% reductions

These averaged out such that posts published through a third-party auto-posting app saw roughly 70% fewer Likes and comments than those published through Facebook's first-party interfaces. This is in part due to Facebook's direct punishment of the EdgeRank of posts by third-party APIs. Also, if a user's news feed contain multiple posts from a single API, whether from a single author or several different Pages and friends, the posts are collapsed and must be unfolded to be seen.



The takeaway point of the study is that it is well worth it to take the extra minute to manually craft a Facebook post rather than auto-post. This might require changes to workflows or allocation of additional human resources. Still, Page owners could be sacrificing a lot of their social media performance and return on investment to save a small amount of time and effort.

Source: Study: Auto-Posting to Facebook Decreases Likes and Comments by 70% (it's older but it's still ringing true)
#70% #autoposting #comments #decreases #facebook #likes
  • Profile picture of the author ZeldaKing
    So basically any way they can create additional barriers - assume they will. At some point, with a large user base it becomes necessary to make things more difficult for what they perceive to be spammers. Google had their reckoning, now FB.

    A real decision about time and resources needs to be made: if engagement is 1/3 as effective, perhaps post 3 times as much w/automation as manual, and use their app platform?
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  • Profile picture of the author aw4248
    I didnt get it what you are trying to say bro
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  • Profile picture of the author Opeleroy
    Crazy!! I always kinda had a feeling that auto-scheduling posts with Hootsuite or something similar would result in less interaction, but by 70%? Yikes!

    I avoided it simply because of the "via Hootsuite" text that accompanied scheduled posts. Got no interest in letting on that posts are scheduled ahead of time.
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  • Profile picture of the author CageyVet
    I think like all statistics, we are not seeing the entire picture.

    No I admit that auto posting will never get as much interaction/engagement as real time posting. That is simply because you are not responding to what is currently happening naturally on the Facebook page. That natural interaction will always get more response.

    Also, I know from experience that a large majority of auto posting campaigns are little more than a few levels about spam. This is because of silly Internet Marketing companies that sell businesses Social Media marketing packages and then just fill a queue with content with not much regard for strategy or social media interaction.

    So from all of that, if a large majority of hootsuite auto posting campaigns are not much more than a regular spammy, lower quality social puking of content over time...then of course it's numbers will show way less interaction than sitting down and actually thinking about what you are going to post in the moment.

    Lastly, too many businesses ONLY rely on scheduled posts because they hire some company to take care of it for them. This of course will cause a downhill effect in their fan interaction due to an obvious noticing of autoposted content by the fans.

    Now if you are creating a social media facebook strategy and campaign. There is nothing wrong with utilizing scheduled posts. The thing is to make sure your strategy utilizes those scheduled posts in specific ways and also make sure that you are utilizing in prompt to manual posting. Things like known announcements, product launches, event reminders, etc are all perfectly fine for scheduled postings. The thing is, I find that following up those scheduled posts with a manual follow up totally increases overall interaction on the fan page.
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    • Profile picture of the author Justin Says
      Originally Posted by CageyVet View Post

      I think like all statistics, we are not seeing the entire picture.

      No I admit that auto posting will never get as much interaction/engagement as real time posting. That is simply because you are not responding to what is currently happening naturally on the Facebook page. That natural interaction will always get more response.
      I definitely never agree entirely with statistics, but I will say that it doesn't entirely matter if you respond. Yes it's a great thing to interact, but I've seen mass interactions on things that I never even look at after I've posted it.

      It's about, what you post, and when.

      Autoposting has a big fault in the fact that it's not really... current information and people end up abusing it. Hence the case study.

      I bet most people who use automation aren't really studying their automation. Instead they just see it as a walk away.

      I'm engaged in what I do, but when I've used autoposting with any of those services, it's definitely been less interactive.

      Now it changes if I just setup a few things for the week that are evergreen, especially if I use the Facebook method.
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  • Profile picture of the author ccole
    jeez... I've been using bufferapp to schedule some of my post..

    Anyway, the reason why I use post scheduler is to make sure that I have shared valuable things that my audience is expecting me to share. Scheduling my post gives me tons of traffic for my site even I'm at sleep. I don't use post scheduler just to post spammy messages in my profile..
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  • Profile picture of the author Lokahi
    The takeaway point of the study is that it is well worth it to take the extra minute to manually craft a Facebook post rather than auto-post.
    You can save even more time by writing up batches of Facebook posts ahead of time and then scheduling each one to appear on the Page later. This could be done once a week or once a month, depending on the topical nature of your page.
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  • Profile picture of the author malcsimm
    The takeaway is: to test. Clearly you can't just schedule posts to be duplicated to all platforms with Hootsuite or whatever which all say: "posted from Hootsuite", etc. Looks shabby.

    So an extra 30 secs doing it manually has to be worth the time. This is about building relationships - with a person not a bot.

    :-)

    Malc
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  • Profile picture of the author johnaustin9
    Auto posting definitely not good idea on facebook.
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    • Profile picture of the author AravGupta
      Not considering automation for social media is the only answer to this. Social media is something that we can consider as another planet where we get to gather, communicate with each other, talk on a lot of things, share our thoughts and all other things. We cannot use automation in our personal life to communicate with people around us because it is of no use. In the same way, it cannot benefit us while participating in social media as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author lexilexi
    Top study Justin, great work TY!!

    Engagement is king! To succeed in social media, it's best to be social.
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  • Profile picture of the author TimothyW
    Aren't there ways of auto posting that look to the viewer exactly the same as if they were posted manually? No branding, like with hootsuite. If so, what are those ways?
    I'm looking for some ways to automate FB posting.
    If there's a way to do it that is invisible to the viewer, then how would they know to avoid it for that reason? They would be unaware of the difference (origin/method). No?

    -- TW
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    • Profile picture of the author Justin Says
      Originally Posted by TimothyW View Post

      Aren't there ways of auto posting that look to the viewer exactly the same as if they were posted manually? No branding, like with hootsuite. If so, what are those ways?
      I'm looking for some ways to automate FB posting.
      If there's a way to do it that is invisible to the viewer, then how would they know to avoid it for that reason? They would be unaware of the difference (origin/method). No?

      -- TW
      Yep this is called scheduling posts.

      And it can work great, but I would suggest still managing it.

      The real problem with autoposting is you'll start to lose a grasp of your audience and what they want. You might think you know what they want.. but their responses could be way different.

      I like to analyze my audience often to see what it is they are talking about and I post accordingly.
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      My name is Justin Lewis. My digital marketing company has been in business for over 10 years with multiple six-figure years. We do provide a premium web design service.

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  • Profile picture of the author Fallen_Angel
    I am definitely guilty of using autoposting too many pages to manually post too. My more popular pages I do post an image once daily manually and it works gets more likes and shares.
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  • Profile picture of the author si588
    This is awesome info that everyone should be aware of especially all the big marketing firms and agencies that rely so heavily on hootsuite etc... awesome
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